Tough Times, Sweet Gestures
by de-anon
Summary: USUK Fluff.  England tries to soothe and encourage a stressed out America.  Oneshot.


**De-anon from the kink meme (finally). Just a bit of USUK fluff that I wrote last November (wow, that was like 3 months ago... o.o) First out of seven fills that I'm uploading from these past few months.**

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><p>If Alfred became any more worked up, Arthur feared that he'd have to inject him with tranquilizer or hold a chloroform soaked rag to his nose to calm him. There had to be some deadly combination that came from too much coffee, too much stress, and too much grease that would send his blood pressure rocketing through rapidly narrowing blood vessels and push him over the edge.<p>

"Alfred. America. Love. Your meeting is over." Perhaps by then, Arthur should have known that his words would have little to no effect on the uptight American. "Please. And stop murdering that hamburger. You'll make yourself absolutely sick." He dared not sit too close to the grotesque scene, instead remaining scrunched up on the opposite side of the trash littered couch in Alfred's flat when he should have been holding him.

America paused mid-bite, ketchup dripping from his chin onto his pants. "Just eating." Still, he set the burger back down onto the foil wrapper on the coffee table and seized his drink, sucking hard enough to risk shooting the straw straight down his throat. Trembling hands clenched around the cup and crushed it of their own accord. He whimpered and slammed it down on the table.

Arthur flinched. "No. Alfred. Calm down. Please. You're going to hurt yourself and I don't have a bloody clue what to press in your phone if you give yourself a heart attack."

"911. Duh." The scowl on his face took Arthur by surprise, but he matched it with his own stubborn glare, brows furrowed beneath gleaming green eyes. Alfred's annoyance faded into a pout and he flopped back onto the couch, head hinging all the way back, eyes staring up at the ceiling. "Sorry, Iggy…I'm just stressed."

Arthur didn't comment on the nickname. There was enough going on without causing some petty argument. "I'm worried about you, alright? I know you can't disclose too much from your meetings, I just…hate seeing you like this."

A lungful of air left the American as a heavy sigh. "I-it's just—" He shoved himself back upright, elbows finding his knees, head buried in his hands, fingers raking through his own hair. "I owe China trillions of dollars and I can't even _count_ that high and neither can China I bet no matter how smart he thinks he is. A-and the economy and Europe and Greece and Germany and life sucks for a lot of my people and people are blaming the President for crap he can't control even though my constitution /clearly/ states the /actual/ separation of power—and why don't my citizens know their own constitution? I mean it's the /constitution/ of the United States of fucking Americ—"

"H-hold on a second. How did this turn into a rant about your constitution?"

Alfred shrugged. Tense shoulders shook. "It's a valid point!"

Arthur stood, shaking his head, keeping his voice to a lower murmur so that Alfred would have to focus harder to hear it over the sound of his own harsh panting. "Count to 500."

"W-what?"

"I didn't stutter. Count to 500, eyes closed, leaned back. I'll be back in a little while." He left no room for argument, instead wading through some crumpled newspaper toward the back rooms, calling back, "I don't hear any counting."

The American's loud voice rang through the flat. "ONE. TWO. THREE. FOUR. FIVE. TWENTY. NEGATIVE FIVE AND A HALF."

Arthur merely rolled his eyes and went to work. The American's bedroom was just as bad as he had feared it would be—he'd put off looking since he'd arrived earlier that morning. Wrappers from burgers and old coke cans were interspersed from newspaper pages from six different circulations, all crumpled up with red ink bleeding through the thin paper. Arthur grabbed as much as he could in open arms and stuffed them into a trashbag he'd taken from the supply closet on his way. He filled it to bursting then kicked it into the bathroom for later.

"TWO HUNDRED, FORTY TWO, ONE MILLION TRILLION, PI ARE SQUARED."

Next he ripped dirty sheets from the bed, stumbling toward the laundry room though he couldn't see over the huge mass that dominated his arms. He heaved it up onto the dryer then dug through cabinets until he found that box of candles he knew Alfred had. These were anything left over from holidays and small celebrations, so Arthur found a whole menorah's worth of candles, a few large round scented stubs, and the advent candle set with wicks barely scorched. There were also some strange coffee scented candles in ornate jars that Arthur had never seen before. He shrugged, taking the whole lot back into Alfred's room.

He left them on the dresser—which he'd cleared of trash by sweeping everything off into another trashbag—and moved toward drawing the shades out over the glistening city of New York, where Alfred's heart rested even if his capital was in DC. It'd recently been soured, Arthur knew, by protests on Wall Street and screamed economic debate that sapped the stressed nation's energy.

Arthur found fresh sheets in the closet out in the hall, and he took one end and snapped them open up over the bed. He pulled til the scrunched, fitted ends were tucked beneath the corners of the mattress. He did the same with the next sheet, but let it drift down. Then he plumped pillows and fussed over the duvet.

"OVER NINE THOUSAND. TWENTY BOTTLES OF BEER ON THE WALL. THREE BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT. BASEBALL IS TEN TIMES COOLER THAN SOCCER."

The Briton resisted the urge to scream something back, instead taking what candles he had and setting them around the room on any available surface. The menorah and Advent candles sat together on the dresser and coffee scented candles were clustered on both nightstands. Other little stubs were jammed into little candle holders and left on the desk. He lit them one by one with a tiny match, sheltering and lowering the tiny fire onto the wicks until they caught. A hazy coffee scent rose and circled the room, little glass bowls aglow and coronas of light framing dancing, sputtering flames. He flipped the light off and hurried back to the living room.

"FIVE HUNDRED," Alfred bellowed the moment Arthur padded up to him. "There." He half grinned, feeling somewhat better after that little session, though by no means less frazzled. The people in the apartments below were probably a lot less pleased about his little show than he was.

"Cheeky wanker," Iggy said. "Now come. It's your bedtime."

"Bedtime? The hell, it's only 8 o clock."

"I'm in charge here, since you've done a poor job of taking care of yourself or your place these past few weeks," Arthur replied. "Come." He'd picked up his bag and was already carting it to his room. He set a few jars of scented oil on the nightstand then sat to admire the everchanging patterns cast on the walls in the darkness.

"Fine. Be—whoa, Arthur, what is all this?" Alfred stopped short, head swiveling around as if he could take it all in at once. "You did all that in like ten minut—"

"On the bed." The nation pointed to the duvet and did not let up his scowl until Alfred did as he was told. "Shirt off."

"What, you going to fuck me?" He unbuttoned the same shirt he'd worn to the meeting and shed it onto the floor.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you." Instead Arthur motioned for him to turn around and lie on his stomach. He crawled up over the American with a small sigh, straddling his lower back, weight warm and pleasant. Spreading some of the massage oils in his hand, he began to knead at the American's back, earning first a startled gasp then a low moan as the other strained toward his touch. The scent of coconut rose with the flickering coffee. "That's right. Relax."

"Arthuuuuuuuuur," Alfred's voice had taken on that childlike tone again—something which normally bothered the island nation, but this time brought relief when he realized America was feeling more like himself.

"I said shush. Close your eyes and focus on breathing. Tomorrow we're going on a long walk through central park and around your streets and you're going to look your people in the faces and see how strong they are." Palms dug into skin, eased knots looser. "You'll look at your architecture and your institutions and the families and the diversity and realize how far your country has come. How much it is capable of." He moved to the shoulders, working along the ledge then up to the base of his neck, earning another moan from the slowly relaxing American. "Then we'll buy you an icecream and perhaps stroll past a school during recess and you can listen to the laughter of your youth and realize that happiness is still possible, even in the worst of times, and that it stems from something simpler and more powerful than the problems we face." Fingers trailed down to between the American's shoulderblades and wove powerful circles into them. "Later we'll pass by a high school and you can look into the faces of those who are about to have to step out into this world and brave a new life of their own. Then you can realize the potential that remains unharnessed in every single one of your people and their desire to become something. You can realize that there is still so much left for your people and country to do and that hard times won't keep you down."

Alfred's shoulders shook and there came a soft sniffle from where his arms sheltered his face. Arthur teased fingers through his hair. "It's alright."

The American turned his head to look at Arthur, corners of his eyes wet with tears, one even streaming down to where an uncertain smile lingered. "Arthur. T-thanks. Tomorrow then? It's a date."


End file.
